


these violent delights

by JaguarCello



Series: fire and powder [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas, Dogs, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Potential Cold War As Plot Device, Pre-Canon, Q and Eve drink cheap wine and Bond is bisexual what more could you want, This is ridiculous, code names, current affairs, the "I think my dog likes your dog" AU nobody wanted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2015526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaguarCello/pseuds/JaguarCello
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q has a nice laptop, and a job saving Great Britain, and a dog called Mabel. Mabel likes to jump in rivers and onto intruders. </p><p>James Bond is accidentally and unknowingly seeing his quartermaster, whom he met too early on a cold morning when walking his dog. His dog is called Gordon, and Gordon is somewhat in love with Mabel, and is inept at hunting rabbits. </p><p> The agent known to Q only as 007 has gone missing, again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There will be Christmas, and gingerbread spiced lattes, and too-expensive gifts brought back from foreign places and left on Q's doorstep.  
>  Q wishes he had become an ICT teacher, really he does. 
> 
> Warnings: will contain canon-typical violence

It was hideously early and the park was painted pewter with frost, glimmering where the first rays of the weak winter sun shone on the grass. London was quiet and still somehow, shrouded in mist thick enough to muffle the traffic which rumbled past Hampstead Heath, and Q, quartermaster at MI6 for two months, hunched slightly further into his anorak. Mabel, his dog – a black Labrador, coat mantled with ice from where she had dived through the glass-covered pond – barked at him, and shook herself until shards of ice flew into his face. He threw a stick for her.

 The heath was empty, apart from a few birds brave enough to sing still, and a flock of Canadian geese overhead. They were late; he wondered half-idly if they would survive the winter. He watched the white-washed trees, branches clinking when they touched, and he tried not to think about how blood bounced on snow. Mabel disturbed a warren of rabbits, barking joyfully as they scarpered for safety, but he knew she would never catch them. They were not so sure, and hurled themselves back underground where they knew her teeth could not get them.

“Is that a metaphor for something?” someone said next to him, and he turned to see a man – taller than him, although most were – with ice-blue eyes and an expensive coat. He was holding a leash, leather and well-made, and over on the grass a beautiful grey dog galloped after the rest of the rabbits; there was a scream, and Q’s stomach tilted, and the dog came trotting towards its master with a young buck clamped between its long teeth.

The man looked at Q, and looked as though he were about to apologise. “He likes to hunt, and he rarely gets the chance – I’m away from home a lot, and he gets restless. It’s unfair but I took him in as a favour to a friend - I was going to get a Borzoi or something but he was so aloof that he had to be mine,” and he looked back at his dog, who was now tossing the broken-backed rabbit into the air and snapping at it with his jaws. “He lets the power get to his head – he’s a Weimaraner and far too proud of it. Gordon!” he called, and Q looked towards the park. Mabel was chewing on a stick.

“Gordon?” he said, and then shrugged. “My dog’s called Mabel. It’s from the Latin _amabilis_ ,” he said quietly, and the man turned to look at him again. His dog loped towards them, blood-stained teeth gleaming, and Q noticed that both man and dog had the same ice-blue eyes. The rabbit was still screaming, unable to move now from where it lay on the grass. The man tutted.

“He’s named after my favourite brand of gin,” he said, and walked towards the rabbit. “He never can quite finish the job,” he added, and picked up the rabbit. Q saw him whisper something, stroke its back for just a second, and then the man wrenched its neck round with such savagery that Q heard the snap, and then the whine as it died. He blinked through his glasses, and wondered if the man were a ghost or a trick of the ever-shifting light. It had just been Hallowe’en, after all.

The man threw the dead rabbit to his dog, who snatched it from the air; Mabel watched in quiet fascination, and then followed Gordon, settling at his feet as she watched him chew his prize. Q felt a little sick.

“Does death bother you?” the man asked. “Does killing?” he added, and then he watched Q’s face with a hawk-like interest.

“Death is an inevitable part of life,” Q replied, tucking his hands into his pockets. His phone beeped just then, and as he pulled it out, he noticed the man was pulling _his_ phone from his pocket, too. It was M: there had been an attack on the main server. Nothing, she assured him, had been stolen, as far as they knew. Q thought of the mooks he had to work with, and tried to repress a shudder. He slipped his phone back into his pocket. “I have to go,” he said to the man, who had unwound the leash from around his arm.

“So do I,” the man said. “I’m James, by the way,” and he held out a hand to shake. His grip, as Q might have known, was vice-like.

Q pretended to rummage for Mabel’s lead as he sorted through his various names for one which would fit his cover: insomniac computer analyst, living with Eve Moneypenny and a Labrador. “I’m Felix,” he said, and cursed under his breath.

James nodded. “I had a friend called Felix, long ago,” he said, and whistled; Gordon came flying towards him, and was soon trotting by his side as they walked towards the park exit. Mabel was beside Gordon, and when James turned to go – breath bright white in the November air – she _whined_ , and tugged at her lead until she could nuzzle Gordon’s neck. James looked at the dogs.

“She’s never usually that friendly,” Q said, and whistled until Mabel was bounding towards him. James smiled at him, and it looked like he was out of practice at it, but Q smiled back.

“Gordon’s never usually particularly fond of strangers,” James said, and patted his dog on the head. “Nor am I, for that matter,” and he turned and walked away whilst Q was still trying to work out what he had meant.

\----

The tube was warm for once, and on time, and as he rattled through the Northern line – Mabel safely deposited with the lady next door to his flat – he thought about James, about the cruel curve of his mouth and the way he killed that rabbit with his hands, encased as they were in expensive gloves. He would have made a good spy, Q was sure of it, and there was something in his bearing which suggested he knew the darkness in his own soul a little too well. Q shrugged, and opened the Metro, flicking to the Technology pages. It was useful to keep up with what the public thought was going on, he told himself, but his mind kept skittering back to James, and to how his hand had felt when Q had shaken it.

He got to the office earlier than expected, walking as fast as he could without taking a puff from his inhaler. M was waiting for him, and every computer in the room was humming.

“It’s sorted,” she said, and looked slightly apologetic. “However, there is something more important – “

He ended up tracking missiles through the sky over Syria, trying not to think that each one exploded in a mess of blood and bodies and guilt, and he went home at half nine at night, when the air was cold enough to snap. He and Eve sat on the sofa and watched _Britain’s Next Top Model_ and ate Chinese takeaway, and did not discuss the ghosts they had made that day but he dreamt of skulls with gaping eye sockets, and when he woke up Mabel had crept into his bed to curl up against his back.

The park, on a different morning when a terrorist had blown himself to pieces for a doomed cause, was colder than it had been before; winter was tightening her grip. The grass was stiff and sharp, and crackled under his feet when he walked across it; Mabel chased at a leaf, and went skittering into the pond again. Q sighed, anticipating teasing each needle of ice from her coat, and then he saw James walking towards them, Gordon prancing around his legs.

“Morning,” he said, and James nodded at him.

“It’s bloody cold,” was all he said, and he produced a bag of beef jerky from his pocket. “I thought that, since Mabel doesn’t seem to eat rabbit, she might like some of this instead. I bought it back from the States,” he added, and Mabel almost had his fingers off when he offered it to her.

“You’re up early again,” Q said, watching his dog cavort with a man who looked like he could snap him in half with his little toe.

“I always am,” James said. “I’m a light sleeper these days – I have my door open,” he said.

 _And your ears cocked, like a gun_ , Q thought, knowing all too well the signs of constant vigilance, and how they wrote themselves across one’s face. “I’m an insomniac. I work in ICT, and even when sleeping my mind is busy. I wake myself up a lot; bad dreams. Nightmares, I suppose, even though at twenty-six I’m not sure you could call them that. Bad dreams,” he added again, and James nodded at him.

“I can certainly sympathise with that,” he said, and then shrugged. “I dream of death, of falling, or failing. It’s the same thing to me. I work in the Civil Service,” and Q tried to contain a flicker of interest.

“Which part?” he asked, casually, and James shrugged again.

“It’s very boring,” he said, and the way he looked out across the frozen park suggested the exact opposite.

“I used to want to be a Grand Master at chess, or maybe a pirate. So I suppose exposing the vulnerabilities of various systems was a fairly good halfway point,” he said, and felt as exposed as if he were a beetle spliced onto a card. James looked at him, and under his gaze Q felt strangely warm, despite the frozen morning.

“I suppose I wanted to be a knight, of sorts. Saving people, damsels in distress. Queen and country, and all that,” James said, rolling a cufflink between his thumb and forefinger. “I was in the Navy for a bit, met a few pirates. I can’t say I liked them much,” but his smirk said otherwise. Mabel and Gordon were digging together, making a mess of the flowerbeds where snowdrops would grow, hopefully.

“I don’t suppose – “ Q began, and thought of himself at fifteen, cautious and infinitely breakable, and took the plunge. “I don’t suppose you’d like to get coffee? Only, it’s not even seven yet, and I’m half asleep as it is, and only strong tea can make me feel human,” and he coiled Mabel’s lead around his arm, in preparation to call her and run.

James looked amused, eyes glinting as he grinned. “I don’t drink tea, but coffee sounds excellent. There’s a Starbucks around here somewhere, or there must be. The bloody things are everywhere now,” and he whistled for Gordon, and then looked back at Q. “We can sit outside with the dogs,” and Q liked that idea, of the two of them being a _we_ , a unit.

The Starbucks was warm inside. Q ordered a chai latte, at which James scoffed. He himself had two espressos, which he drank alarmingly quickly and then slammed them back down onto their saucers, sending them skittering across the table. The table was so cold that it had stuck to Q’s hand where he had tried to steady them, and when he tried to pull it away, he felt the painful burn of skin ripping.

 James put his hand – calloused, with short fingernails and a dubious scar – over Q’s, and it was warm, but that wasn’t why Q inhaled sharply. James watched him, face smooth but eyes alive, as if he were laughing inside at some private joke, and then he pulled both their hands free from the table. Q stretched his fingers backwards until his clipped nails touched the backs of his hands, and James cocked an eyebrow.

“I’m double jointed,” Q said, and James watched him like a hawk, like he wanted to bend him over the table there and then, and Q ached to touch him, to put his hands inside his ridiculously expensive coat, and bent to feed Gordon and Mabel some of the bacon from his sandwich.

James’s phone beeped at him, and he sniffed once but, cramming the last of his Danish pastry into his mouth, he stood up. Gordon barked as he did so, and James unwound the lead from his arm – where it had been left to look like a falconer’s glove – and turned to go.

“This has been – nice,” he said, as if words of courtesy did not often pass his lips, and he looked as if there was something else he wanted to say.

“I don’t suppose you’ll be wandering Hampstead Heath at any point in the not-too-distant future?” Q asked, and James looked relieved. It looked odd on a man so clearly used to getting what he wanted without fuss.

“I hope so,” was all he said, and Q watched him go, trying not to focus on the way his arse moved in his obscenely tight and well-tailored suit.

At work that morning, there was talk of another Cold War. Q, who did not remember the last one, sat and listened to the old legends, the old ring-masters of that lost circus, discuss the situation.

“The Russians want to reclaim the Motherland, which as they see it is the entirety of the former Soviet states and anywhere else they can take. Moscow is ruthless, and we know from Litvinenko that they have no scruples when it comes to silencing people,” said Tanner, and M pursed her lips.

“Moscow is not foolish enough to enter into a war, not when they need our trade,” said Hamilton from behind his desk. “It gets awfully cold there in winter when all you have to live on is promises of Soviet glory,” and M smirked. She was warming to him, old dinosaur that he was.

Eve set a folder of papers on M’s desk. “I think,” she began, “that perhaps at the moment, we need Russian oil and Russian oligarchs more than they need us. We need their billions, their football club-owning whims, their arms deals and their energy, and they see that. They know that all too well. We cannot risk cutting ourselves off from that income,” and M nodded at her.

“We might have to,” muttered Hamilton. “We cannot risk open warfare – “

“Who said anything about open warfare?” M said. “We’re a _secret intelligence service_. We can afford to be clandestine. Send 007,” she suggested, and everyone in the room straightened up.

Q had heard many tales of 007, the man with possibly fewer scruples than Putin, or so he had been told. Reckless and ruthless and alarmingly brilliant, was how Eve had put it – when she had returned from Turkey shaken and wan. Q had hugged her, and told her she was so brilliant that she had killed the unkillable, and then they had got drunk on boxes of wine. Spies were never as well paid as the stories would like the public to believe – who would believe that people would fight and die for their countries and eat lentils? Eve had confided to him, three boxes of wine down, that Bond was “devastatingly attractive and dangerous”, and Q had put her to bed with a bucket and a glass of water. He had not slept that night, but 007 had not come back from that mission.

“He’s back,” M said, to general amazement. Q looked round at her. “He was lying low, maintaining a civilian presence for a few months. Getting back to fitness, getting London back into his lungs,” she added, and then she shrugged. “He wanted to disappear, but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that we wouldn’t notice his bloody Omega bills,” and Tanner laughed at that.

“He’s back. I’m not surprised, by this point. Moneypenny! You didn’t kill him after all,” he said, and Eve smiled and then looked like she might cry, just for a second.

“Back to the Russian situation,” M said. “We send 007. He’ll probably sleep with a few women, a few men, find the information we need in the most complicated and expensive way possible – there’s a point, actually,” and she looked at Q.

“No gadgets this time – the Russians know what we’re like now. We’ve been playing this great game for centuries with them, and they recognise every trump card and pawn. He will have to just survive this,” she said, and looked down at her hands for a second.

Tanner nudged Q. “There are some weapons systems we’d like you to get at, if you can. Those pesky Ukrainian separatists have gone far enough, if you’re up for a challenge,” and Q thought of James’s wolfish smile, and nodded.

The morning passed in a blur of Ukrainin and Russian and some Farsi thrown in, with GCHQ barking translations down his earpiece almost as fast as he was typing. Eve came past at one point with a bowl of soup, which he spilled down his front and swallowed in equal amounts as he concentrated, and that night he did not dream. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the fate of the free world is threatened, again.   
> James has developed a limp and a startling honesty about himself. Q has developed an overreliance on microwaveable curries. He has started sneaking Mabel into work. 
> 
> There is kissing in coffeeshops as the cold war rears its ugly head once more.

There had been too many civilian deaths for work to be quiet, now that Islamic State were decapitating people at a rate of knots, and Mabel had had to be walked by Percy – neighbour, cautious maybe-friend – for a few mornings. Q was convinced that he had been feeding her too much; she flung herself at him with the strength and mass of a small bulldozer, and he staggered back until Eve clapped a blanket over his shoulders and forced him to bed.

 He had not seen James for two weeks, and it was halfway through November. The park was frostier than ever, and the people he saw – an old man with an equally old collie, a pair of horny teenagers with a tiny crossbred puppy – were cooler still, and he missed the strangeness of his mornings. Mabel had managed to catch a rabbit, on the same day that MI5 thwarted an assassination plot against the Queen, but she had not killed it. He wished, with a fervour that he would deny under torture, that James had been there to see it.

At his desk, back up in the real building – repaired, replaced – the circus went on. The agents came and went and lived and died, the secretaries chattered about 007’s abs and what they supposed was happening to him in Syria. Nobody knew, officially, anything at all, and the Thames was still a murky grey colour. Life went on as it always had, and Q was bored.

 “007 – “ he began, looking at the calendar on the wall – “British Coastlines,” in a morale-boosting display of clichéd patriotism – and then looking M in the face.  M had attempted, the rumour was, to do Movember, but had to give it up after he was denied access to the building on the grounds that his security card no longer looked like him. Q wondered if James had done Movember, and what he would look like with stubble, and then realised that M was looking at him.

“007’s location is not something you need to know,” M said, as he signed a document with a flourish.

“No, I mean he’s reappeared on the radar, so to speak. He’s hurt,” Q said, and rolled his eyes. “Did GCHQ not – “

 “Is he still in Syria?” M asked. “Is he – is it Islamic State? For God’s sake, how is it that a prepubescent state school boy knows – “

Q shrugged at that. “He’s in London, actually. Just got off the train at St. Pancras – requesting a car meets him and takes him to the King Edward VII hospital, and then the Ritz,” he said, brightly, and flickered his fingers in a rhythm on his thighs.

“Moneypenny can go,” M said, and slammed his fist onto the desk with such force that a pen-pot – a Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin, recycled – fell onto the floor. Q watched the pens kaleidoscope across the obscenely expensive carpet, and nodded. It was nearly seven, and the streets were a deep inky black outside the window.

On his way home, he stopped off at a supermarket and bought himself a new cactus. He had nine now, gleaming greens and greys, crammed onto the widest window ledge in their flat. Mabel barked when she heard his key in the lock – he had three doors and four locks, not to mention all manner of cameras, heat-detectors, bombs – and he pushed open the door as she barrelled into him.

“Just us tonight, my girl,” he said, and stuck a frozen curry in the microwave. As he waited, he read the news idly, and then flipped to the back of the Times. He had completed the crossword before the microwave beeped. Mabel pretended she had not yet been fed, nudging her bowl with her nose, but he patted the sofa beside him and she jumped up eagerly.

Eve came in as the clock on the mantelpiece was striking midnight, and he sat up from where he had been dozing slumped over his laptop screen. His lap was burning, a combination of laptop and Labrador, and he wordlessly stuck her curry into the microwave.

“Job done?” he said, after three minutes. She looked at him from under her eyelashes.

“He is the most _difficult_ patient I have ever seen. He refused to admit that he was injured, even though he had told you and half of GCHQ, once they had decided to do their fucking jobs and track his signals. Then, they cut off his shirt, and found he had been shot twice and stabbed in the shoulder, but he had _dug the bullets out_ himself,” and she looked down.

“The bullets were a very specific type. You’ll have an email about it in the morning, but – well. We think it proves – _think_ , mind – that the Russians are funding Islamic State. We can’t be sure, with the layers of secrets and pictures of beautiful dachas and those Borzois, but there are traces here and there, on the dark web.”

Q swore, and thought about another Iron Curtain, and statues in Red Square, and of deals in the desert with men who had become trade-masters in death. “We can’t do anything about that here,” he said, slowly. “And why would they do that? Why would they risk the careful allegiances we have forged, despite Ukraine -“

She stirred her tea, too quickly; a little sloshed out. “You’ll know more about that than I do,” and she paused, pulled her curry out of the microwave, and shoved a fork into it gloomily. “The Cold War might be heating up. Just in time for Christmas though, and I suppose we could use the overtime.”

 He looked out the window, at the slanting rain. “We don’t get paid overtime,” he said, and she whacked him on the arm.

_________________________

 

A few days later, on a brisk Monday, the world had not yet ended. The international community had awoken to another beheading in Syria, the forgiveness of his parents, the condemnation from Obama, and “I’m A Celebrity” had started back on television. That morning, Q saw James again for the first time in what must have been months.

“Hello,” he said, as he saw James come loping over the grass, with a slight twist to his gait.

“Didn’t your mother tell you not to talk to strangers?” James said, smiling, and bent to stroke Mabel’s head.

“She got a rabbit,” Q said, ignoring James’s closeness, and pretending he could not feel his breath warm on his face.

“Atta girl,” James said, as if he had spent all his boyhood reading _Boys Own_ and _Famous Five_ ; perhaps, Q reasoned, he had.

“Where did you go to school?” he asked, as if it were the most burning question on his mind.

James shrugged. “A school on the Thames, and then I left to go to Scotland,” he said, and Gordon appeared from over the hill, jaws clenched and bloody. Q imagined James, gun in hand, shooting grouse. He fancied he would be rather a better shot than Q himself, who had fumbled all the practical tests every time he took them.

“Nice and specific,” Q said.

“Eton, and then Fettes after I was kicked out,” James said, and Q took a step backwards in surprise. Out of everything, he had not been conditioned to expect full honesty from James.

“Knew you were a posh twat,” he said, and James shrugged.

“My parents were adamant that I go to Eton – my father did, I think. I never knew him really, only in that vague way that a child knows his father will be home from work, will bring him hot chocolate to stave away nightmares. My mother was soft and kind and that’s all I remember – they died in a climbing accident,” he said, softly. Q was beginning to wish he had not pried.

“My parents are still alive, but only just,” he said, and felt the first real sense of a connection with James. “They disapprove of my job, my lifestyle, my income, and they’re not fans of my haircut either,” and James barked out a laugh. Gordon leaped up at him, snapping his bloody jaws, and Q tried not to shiver.

“Parents never approve of their children’s lifestyles,” James said agreeably, and Q is glad he did not have to lie about his job again.

“My mum refuses to believe that you can be fully _compos mentis_ and sleep with whomever you wish,” he said, slightly sadly, remembering that awful Christmas when his boyfriend had been met with stony disapproval and a reluctance to pass the potatoes. James looked up at him.

“I suppose mine would have been alright with it. My uncle Max was certainly not straight, if the stories he told me after a couple too many whiskies were correct, and I seem to have followed in his footsteps,” he said, candidly, as if they were discussing the weather. Q thought about pressing his thumbs into James’s hipbones.

 A group of birds winged their way across the blank white sky, in a v- formation. “They’re probably escaping this cold,” Q said, and James laughed.

“Africa isn’t as fun as it looks on the Lion King,” he said, and Q rolled his eyes.

“That film ruined me,” he said, petulantly, and James whistled for Gordon.

“And me. Try having lost your parents to a climbing accident, and dreaming of finding their bodies at the bottom of ravines, and then inexplicably having wildebeest there too – it makes for a very confusing psychoanalytical profile,” he said, flippantly, and threw a stick for the dogs. Mabel snatched it from the air. Gordon watched her, admiringly.

“The songs are _awful_ , as well,” Q said, as sleet began to slide from the sky.

“You can moan,” James replied, “but they keep me going on my runs. The pure inanity of it all means I am rather willing to flee them,” and Q thought about James – tall, scarred, muscular James, running to Disney songs around Hyde Park.

“Do you want to get coffee again?” Q asked, as the sleet started to drip down the back of his neck.

“Love to,” James said, and this time, the lady let them bring Mabel and Gordon into the shop, as long as they promised not to let them wee anywhere. James drank his coffee slowly, as if he had not had proper coffee for a while, and Q drunk his tea with a quiet acceptance: he fancied this man.

“Work is tough at the moment,” he said, looking at the still-slumbering streets. “I’m working for a company on a freelance basis, and they’re based in America, so they keep sending me work at all hours of the night. I’m usually awake, but even so, it’s draining. Plus, it’s not as difficult as they think it is, and it’s becoming almost _dull_ ,” he said, and realised that none of that was a lie.

“My work is getting far too busy, far too close to Christmas,” James said. “Even if it is more than a month away, I like to spend time on my shopping, when I have it – and at the moment I’m out of the country half the time. I’m an attaché for a businessman who does far too much business with the government, and he thinks nothing of breakfasting in Berlin, lunching in Luxembourg and then dinner on the cross-channel ferry. I hate ferries,” he added. “I never get sea-sick, and I’m a decent swimmer, but I wish the bloody man would let us fly,” and he stirred his coffee dregs.

“I hate flying,” Q said, thinking of the swoop in his stomach when the plane takes off. He carefully ignored the fact that it was almost the same swoop as when he saw James that morning, and sighed. “I mean, I understand the physics of the matter, of course – “

“Of course,” said James, and flashed his sharp teeth in a grin.

“But,” Q went on, more than a little flustered, “it just feels awful. If God had wanted us to fly, we would have wings,” he said, parroting one of his mother’s favourite phrases.

“If God had wanted us to fly, he would have made us angels,” James countered, and Q felt a little lost.

“I’ll be honest, I never really went to church beyond what I was expected to in order to get my Christmas presents,” he said, and James laughed.

“Let’s drop the theology then,” he suggested, and leaned a fraction closer. “If you drank coffee with cream, I could pretend to have to wipe coffee off your upper lip. And then I could have kissed you, and I really want to kiss you,” he said, and Q felt his cheeks redden.

“That would be – fine,” he said. “I mean, I’m sure my mother did mention something about strange men accosting me in parks, but – “

James kissed him, and his mouth was softer than Q had imagined. Q smiled against his lips, and kissed him back, one hand reaching under the table to rest on James’s thigh. James sighed into his mouth, and deepened the kiss, shifting slightly so that he could clutch at Q’s spare hand. Q tried to stifle a moan, which only got louder as James turned his attention to his neck, biting him until he shifted his hips in the seat, desperate for _more,_ anything, everything. James groaned, and Q moved his hand up his thigh until he was an inch from James’s groin and then the clock chimed the hour, and Q realised he was hard in a coffee shop and approaching late for work.

James looked up, swore, and stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then looked at his watch, as if hoping it was wrong. “I have to go,” he added, and shoved his coat on, making it to the door before pausing. “I’m going to dive into a taxi now, but my number is – “ and he rattled it off as Q tapped it into his personal phone. James grinned at him, before leaping over the chair for another deep kiss, until he swore into Q’s mouth and tore himself away, Gordon loping behind him.

Q drank the rest of his tea as quickly as he could, hands shaking with desire, before clattering down the steps to the underground. Unable to remember if dogs were allowed on or not, he prayed that nobody would say anything – and reasoned that if they did, the wrath of the British government would fall on them in spades. He made it into work on time, praising every god under the sun that the tube had not failed him for once, before racing to the nearest bathroom as soon as he had deposited Mabel with a resigned Eve, where he unzipped his trousers and pretended it was James’s hands stroking him furiously, shoving his other hand between his legs and imaging James’s fingers inside him, before coming as silently as he could.

His legs were still shaking by the time he got back to his desk.

“You’ve got teeth marks on your neck, by the way,” Eve said, smugly. “Did park guy come up trumps? Oh, and the world might be over by tomorrow, if North Korea puts their money where their mouth is,” and she smirked.

“Perfect,” said Q. “The fate of the world cock-blocks me once more,” and he put his head on his desk.

“Don’t worry,” she said, passing him his tea. “007 is on the case, apparently. Prepare yourself; we’ll meet him tomorrow. You have been working on those radios, haven’t you?”

“So, a gung-ho, probably sexist, privately educated, serial womaniser is coming to visit. Well, Christmas has come early,” he said, and she hit him with a copy of the Times. “I’ve made him several. I’ve heard of this reputation he has for losing things,” and she rolled her eyes.

“You might like him,” she said, and he scoffed at that.

“I need to get to work,” he muttered, and plugged himself in.


	3. Chapter 3

A week later, after the vaunted visit had all been a misunderstanding – 007 had failed to show - Q smuggled Mabel in through the fire exit, and let her sleep under his desk for a few hours. Eve smirked, and reached into her desk for the dog biscuits she kept there for this purpose. National security, he reasoned, could not be threatened by Labradors, but it was best to keep Mabel quiet for as long as possible.

“What does 007 look like?” he asked, as casually as he could, whilst testing a new firewall. She looked at him, long and measured, and then sighed.

“Taller than you, blue eyes, blondish hair. Rugged, maybe? They use that word in awful romances but I think it applies; he now walks slightly stiffly thanks to Islamic State’s generous application of bullets. He wears stupidly expensive clothes, and talks about his dog a lot. He’s devastatingly attractive, and he knows it - ” She paused. “Shit, your absentee park guy is – “

The door slid open, and in walked M, tie askew. “No time for gossiping, Moneypenny,” he snapped, and they both turned to look at him. Q risked a glance at Eve and saw she was pale; it was rumoured in the department that the last time anyone as high up as M had left their office, there were bombs falling on London.

 M set his briefcase on the floor, carefully, as if it were laced with explosives. It may well have been, Q realised, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“007 is missing,” M said. “We lost him in Budapest – there was a bomb and a bridge, and things got ugly. There is a tracker in his phone – good work, quartermaster – but as far as we know he’s not _with_ the bloody thing,” and his fists were clenched. “Why he was in Budapest is, of course, secret. I am however obliged to tell you that the tracker in his phone was a prototype. For it to fall into the wrong hands would be catastrophic – it would flay the very skin off our backs. That tracker must be returned, and Bond with it. I’ve written far too many obituaries for the man already,” and he shoved a mess of papers at Eve, who took it as if on autopilot.

 “Of course,” M said, “you can be of little practical help. But it is imperative that we let you know that in giving a prototype to an operative as _reckless_ as 007, you might have compromised national security again. Oh, and Tanner wants your head,” and he turned on his heel and left.

 The door slid shut. Q looked at his hands. “I didn’t mean to release the prototype,” he said, and Eve sighed.

 “Well, I’ve shot 007 before, and he still let me shave him with a cutthroat razor. 007 – James – will almost certainly let you have coffee with him, if and when he returns,” she said, and Q blinked.

“You’re _sure_ that hot coffee guy is 007? James? Did he go to Eton?” he asked, remembering James’s clipped nails trailing across his thigh.

 Eve shrugged. “I’ve not spoken to him specifically about school, but he has mentioned it before,” and she tilted her head to the side, as a bird looks at a berry. “Wait, so – he has pretended to be _normal_ for you? Like, he has a job in the civil service, he is posh, he owns a dog and he has never killed anyone? That is strangely endearing. I have a feeling that he will soon be bringing you bits of bodies, shrapnel, nuclear weapons. I mean, he seems to be the type to ingratiate himself through presents – “

“He told me he had gone to a school on the Thames, and then admitted that well, it had been Eton. He was probably room-mates with the fucking _PM_ ,” Q said, heart hammering. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere, you know. I’m an Oxford reject. Degrees from redbrick universities don’t tend to sit well with Eton alumni, I think,” and he looked at his cuticles as if they could reassure him of this fact. Eve hit him with 007’s file.

 “You’re an idiot,” she said. Mabel barked in agreement.

 “Oh,” M said, as he came back into the room silent as a snake, “he had put on his file that whilst he has no wife, children, family or TV license, he is loyal to his dog. We can put the animal in a pound – I understand he has a neighbour of sorts, some café owner or something quaint, who looks after it whilst he is enjoying the thrill of having his brains blown out for Britain – or we could – “

 “I’ll take him,” Q said, suddenly, horrifyingly brave. “I mean, the dog. I have Mabel, and she likes company. I can work from home for the next few days. I mean, all I’ll be doing is worrying about that prototype – “

M looked amused. Q felt as if he would become a footnote to the legendary department Christmas card, and then he remembered that the fate of the free world had rested in his hands since he was twenty-two, and he was a genius. Then M laughed, and Q thought about the pun opportunities: Genius Goes Barking Mad – and scowled.

 Eve raised an eyebrow, and Q shrugged. “I like dogs,” he said, weakly.

 M nodded. “If you think you can deal with the thing – I understand it has a taste for blood just like its master – then you’ve got just as much backbone as we suspected when we recruited you. The Midlands were not the place for you,” and he looked strangely proud.

“With respect, sir – “ Q began, but M waved a hand imperiously.

“The dog will be in your office by six this evening. I know Moneypenny has dog biscuits, so you can keep him entertained,” he said, and swept out of the office again.

 “Well,” Eve said. “Nice one, specs,” and Mabel licked Q’s hand sympathetically, smearing it with essence of rabbit.

 ___________

Q moped.

He spent the days looking out of the window, listening to Taylor Swift thinking about strong scarred hands and trying to remember the few words of Hungarian he remembered from a long-ago maths exchange. Eve made endless cups of tea, which cooled or spilled or curdled, and he was treated as if he had had a lobotomy. His work was as flawless as ever, but he felt as if he were on autopilot. Rain had taken to sliding sullenly down the windows until even the great grey Thames was hidden.

On the fourth day, he realised – catching a shadow at the window – that his protection detail had been increased, and that his phones were being tapped again. Eve took to sitting with him in the evenings, watching the stars dance across the skies as they drank cheap red wine again, fingers curled in the dogs’ fur.

 Gordon had moved in, with an enthusiasm only matched by Mabel’s. The two had become terrifyingly good friends, and Mabel was now catching more rabbits than Gordon. She had taught him to kill them properly; Q thought that perhaps this was a bad thing. Trained killers tended to go missing, after all, and two days after he had been deposited on the doorstep, he vanished in the middle of the night. M thought it would be a waste of resources to track a dog, but Q was inconsolable, searching until the small hours to find him – but to no avail. Gordon had gone, as wild as his master.

After a week, he spotted a weak signal. 007 was back on the map, popping up in Peru. They heard later that day that a Greenpeace activist had been found in the desert with shaven head, and the Nazca lines drawn onto his back with his own blood; he had been stretched out under the sun, skin cracked and parched as the ground around him.

 “Bond does his recycling, of course, and Greenpeace could have caused an international incident,” M said. “But we mustn’t encourage him to go around killing whomever he wishes, just because they – “

 “It wasn’t Bond,” Q said, reading about the bullet cases that had been left in the desert. “Too sloppy, and too cruel. He’d just shoot them, wouldn’t he? No dicking around – sorry, sir, no messing around, surely?”

 M was silent until Q looked at him. “He left Dominic Greene to die in a desert once, with only a can of oil to drink. Before your time, but Bond struggles to play the gentleman,” and Q fell silent.

 “Either way,” M said, “we need him back, and alive. I don’t care, right now, what it is that Bond has done in Peru. We need him,” and he left Q, staring at the blank screen of his computer.

 ______

“Control?” said Bond through his earpiece, and Q jolted awake. Pushing aside thoughts of James purring low and lethally in his ear, he struggled upright and felt his way to where his computer was. His room was pitch black; it was three in the morning, and Mabel was snoozing on the floor, curled up around her blanket. She was missing Gordon.

“007,” he said, as coolly and professionally as he could manage. “Where the hell have you been?”

 There was a brief silence, and what sounded like a car horn, before James spoke again. “Bloody Q, always one step ahead of me. I guessed you were part of this goddamned circus,” he said, and then stopped. “You’re – I _bit your neck_ ,” and there was another car horn before he seemed to snap out of it. “I left Peru a week ago,” he said.

“Where are you now?” Q asked, as if his heart were not racing. “And what on _earth_ happened in Peru? We heard from Soledad that you had shown up there, and the next thing we knew, there was a body found with a fucking tattoo of the Nazca lines – “

“That wasn’t me,” James said, calmly, before Q heard a car door slamming through the mouthpiece. “How did you know I was 007?” he added.

“Eve told me about you,” Q said, “your womanising and your stupid expensive suits, and then we connected the dots. More importantly, how did you know I was your quartermaster?”

 There was a pause, and a muffled curse. “Could you let me in, please? Sorry I’m late, the traffic is murder this close to Christmas -”

 Q half-laughed. “There is _no way_ you’ve found my flat, 007. Seriously. This flat is as highly protected as M’s, and even better decorated. It was specifically chosen. The entire building belongs to the security services and everyone living here forms part of my protection detail. It’s _secret_ – “

 “Yeah,” Bond said, and Q could have sworn that he laughed, “but Gordon tracked you,” and Q frowned.

“Gordon _vanished_ in the middle of the bloody night, and you think it’s funny that I spent four days and about £10,000 of government funds looking for him? Since I seem to have become the master of finding lost idiots nowadays – for God’s sake, James! 007. I don’t even know what to fucking call you,” but he pressed the buzzer, and heard the first of seven deadlocks clunk open.

“You don’t deserve to come in,” he went on. “You meet me, you know I’m your quartermaster, and you decide not to tell me? You let me go on thinking you’re an ordinary bloke who kisses strange men in coffee shops? Seriously, I’d heard you were a cold bastard, but this takes the biscuit,” and he put the kettle on.

“In my defence,” James began, “I only found out you were Q after we had kissed, and then I had to go to Budapest. I got my phone covered in someone else’s blood – that’s why I didn’t check in, by the way. The CIA are going to report about torture after 9/11, and there is nothing now that we can do. The death was not as much of a deterrent as M had hoped. After that, I followed the trail to Peru. That was a dead end,” he added. Gordon slipped past him and into the flat; he bounded upon Mabel, who wagged her tail at him. Q watched the two of them cavort before turning back to James.

“So, you killed someone, failing to get important information?” he asked, and the last lock slotted into place with another clunk. The door whirred open. “You look tired,” he said, looking at James. His normally perfect shirt was creased, and his tie was loose, and Q had never seen anything as beautiful. James took a step forwards, as if expecting to be attacked by some sort of missile.

 Q’s flat was more than capable of that, but he settled for handing James a mug of the strongest coffee he could cope with making. “M’s on the warpath, by the way. She wants to cancel your cards, revoke all your security clearances, and possibly murder you,” he said, and watched James pale.

“I killed a man, yes. And I killed someone else in Budapest. My job involves silencing people whose secrets would mean many more lives lost. I killed two men when two million might have died – but one escaped. He has secrets. We can expect another Edward Snowden, I think. He was a Russian national, but we had used him as a double agent in the eighties. The wall crumbled and so did his allegiance,” and Q looked towards the humming computer screen.

“People are going to die,” he said, thinking about cyber-criminals stalking his creations, and shivered. “You need to brief M,” and Bond nodded.

“I told him in the taxi here. For now, I just need to sleep,” and he stumbled. Q grabbed his arms, and helped him to the sofa, and then sat beside him, tucking himself half under James’s long legs. Gordon sidled up to the sofa and flopped across Q’s arms, before Mabel squeezed in between the arm of the sofa and James’s feet.

 By eight in the morning, Moneypenny had circulated a photograph of the two of them around the internal email system. It was captioned “Puppy Love”, and even Tanner replied with a smiling face emoji.

 Then, all hell broke loose.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is silly i'm so sorry


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More problems at work. Sadly, Q thinks to himself, problems for him are more than just a paper jam. 
> 
> On the other side of Europe, James Bond has run into some old friends.

Q was plugged in, tinkering with his latest creation, when the door to his office swung open. “Q,” Tanner said, looking as though a disliked nephew had kicked him in the shins, “you’re wanted at the National Gallery. I don’t know why,” he warned, as Q opened his mouth to ask.

“Is it – official business?” Q asked, wondering if he’d have time to brush his teeth before James started stealing paintings. “I mean – “

“It’s not 007,” Tanner said. “That’s the issue. It’s someone with his _DNA_ in a test-tube, and they have some sort of prototype of yours – it must be that one that went missing a while ago – and you’re bait.”

“So when you said you didn’t know why,” Q begun, and Tanner shrugged.

“I knew why. Lying’s a habit, or has it not bitten you yet? You’re to go there. He can’t work the prototype. He’s Russian, ex-KGB, and was considered for the Soviet boxing team at one point. You’ll have a gun, of course – you have _passed_ your marksmanship exams, haven’t you?”

“Of course,” Q lied. “So – “

“The Soviets are after you, because you’re the cleverest person we have. Clearly a redbrick university offers a more rounded education than my college at Cambridge, because you’re the best we’ve got. They’re after you and they’ve got Bond and this prototype and – “

“They’ve got James?” Q said, and he thought suddenly of when he and James were sat in a little restaurant in a tiny town in southern Spain and holding hands under the table. “They’ve –“

“Q,” said Tanner. “You can get him back. You’ll be going with Moneypenny. But you’re the bargaining chip. The bait. I’ve run out of metaphors – it’s been a long day.” He paused, and looked down at his hands. “Be careful, won’t you,” he said, and he left.

Q pinched himself on the wrist, and then again, harder. “Oi,” Eve said, and as she walked into the room she threw him a brown parcel. “Open it.”

He pulled open the flaps, and was about to run his fingers along the underside when Eve snatched it away from him. “Rule one,” she said, pulling it open as if she were opening a crisp packet. “Never trust anyone,” and she showed him the razor blades glued to the opening. He glanced at his fingertips, checking they were all still attached.

“I have done the training,” he said, mildly. She shrugged, and handed him a coffee.

“The plan is this: we go to the gallery. We pretend you’re my boyfriend, or brother. We grab the guy, lock him up, torture him until he tells us – “ She broke off, and looked at him. “Calm down Amnesty International, that was a poorly timed joke. We’re not American,” and she allowed herself a smile. “We do not negotiate with terrorists, which is why the government cannot know about this. It’s a kill order. We find him, we let him lead us to 007. Have you –“

“The prototype can be activated by fingerprint recognition,” he said. “But I’d not told James that, because as a safety measure – when in design – it has to have two people’s fingerprints on it. It’ll then become a grenade, which sounds implausible, but I won’t bore you with the details.” He broke off. “It needs my fingerprints. And – if we manage to get that close, chances are it’ll be a struggle for the bloody thing. I’m not coming home, am I?”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “I hate to be callous, but it’s my job – you’ve written a will, haven’t you? And you and James – how does that stand, officially?”

“They know we’re fucking. I’d appreciate it if he could be mentioned in my obituary, and he feels the same – we’ve discussed it – but, well. I’d move heaven and earth for him, and I’m not sure he’d do the – “

“He worships you, for some reason. The hotshot international spy and the computer nerd from a shitty market town – who’d have thought it? Mills and Boon should get involved – but anyway. You’re all sorted, legally, for whatever happens.” She drained the last dregs of her coffee.

__________________________________________

_ST. PETERSBERG, RUSSIA_

It was cold, and getting colder. James could feel the shirt he was wearing begin to stiffen, and he looked up to the bright light which was swinging from the low ceiling. “You do realise,” he said, in his most polite Russian, “that this is completely full of cliché? I mean, if you’re going to torture and interrogate me, at least do it with some imagination – “

“You’re our guest,” said Dmitri, in English. “We will speak your language, to be polite. How are things in England? How is your tea and crumpets?”

James looked at him. “Even your _insults_ are stereotypical. God, I miss the Cold War – but things are well. Not too many human rights atrocities. Not too many fascists, racists, homophobes. Although here, I suppose, the scum rises to the surface. The loudest minority -

“You have come to us and given us a most unexpected present. What _would_ _ба́бушка_ say?” Andrei asked. “This – this phone of yours is _very_ interesting. It’s been giving us quite a lot of trouble, actually.”

“We’ve sent our man in London to meet your little pet,” said Andrei. “Your quartermaster,” he clarified, and he leered.

James felt his heartrate surge to a gallop. “They all have the same code name for a reason,” he said, thinking of Q’s clever mouth kissing the insides of his thighs. “They’re just – clever kids who got lucky in ICT one day,” and Andrei raised an eyebrow.

“We have good intelligence that the two of you are _fucking_. Is he another one of your toys? To be used and abused and then thrown away once his batteries have run out? Or is it you who’ll run out – I mean, you’re not as young as you once were, not when you and I used to dance around each other all the way down the Berlin Wall – “

“At least during the Cold War your torture was worth something. This is playground piss-taking, Andrei. I expected better of you,” James said, as coldly as he could. He began to hum.

“You expected better of the Andrei I pretended to be,” Andrei said, slowly. “I danced my little dance, had to socialise with people like _Burgess_ and _Philby_ , passing documents back and forth across and under the Berlin Wall. You think you owned me? You think that the motherland meant so little to me that I would sell myself to the West – “ he spat the word – “for a few extra deutschmarks a week?”

“I think,” James said, slowly, “that you were a far better Western agent than you’d ever give yourself credit for,” and Dmitri emptied another bucket of freezing water over his head. “My shirt was just drying,” he said, fighting the urge to punch them both for daring to mention Q.

Andrei blinked. “Didn’t they ever tell you not to taunt a bear?” he said, and smashed his fist into the side of James’s face.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment! Comments and kudos are my lifeblood. 
> 
> I'm on tumblr, at [](http://francisabernathy.tumblr.com/ask>here</a>%20so%20if%20you%20have%20any%20questions%20please%20direct%20them%20there.)


End file.
